Danny Boyle isn’t a horror director by trade, but he still knows how to scare us in a darkened theater.
The genre-jumping artist (“Trainspotting,” “Slumdog Millionaire”) delivered one of the best zombie films in recent memory – 2002’s “28 Days Later.”
Boyle told “The Reel Truth” author Reed Martin his philosophy for maximizing chills on screen:
“How do you scare people in a movie? Give me three ways. And I would tell them sound sound sound.”
Is he right?
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I'm an award-winning journalist and film critic with more than a decade of experience in newspapers, magazines and the Web. I'm a member of the Broadcast Film Critics Association, the Washington, DC Area Film Critics Association and the Denver Film Critics Society.
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I was throwing a party one night and was showing Scream in one of the rooms. No Sound. During the beginning when Drew Barrymore was getting the treatment, that room was full of folks who flipped when they saw the masked killer roaming around the outside. They rewound it and played with the sound. Both had the same reaction and as cheesy at it got later, most of those folks left the room and couldn’t watch anymore.
Hard to nail down what make’s a movie scary, it’s a combo of things. But film is a visual medium. A good scary movie should be able to be scary even if the sound is turned off.
I’d have to agree.
Visuals are not as scary. Once you see the “monster”, the “scare” is over. I think sounds that bring you into the scene (buzzing light fixture, dripping water, footsteps,) all place you in the shoes of the protagonist/victim.
don’t get me wrong i like boyle’s films but when this film first came out i kept hearing how it was the scariest film in years and i wasn’t that impressed with the film. i actually liked ‘28 weeks later’ better. i actually think as far as recent horror films go ‘Splinter’ and ‘The Signal’ are very good.
Ditto Mrk. The less visible the threat, the more threatening it is. “The Others” scared the crap out of me for that very reason. There were no visuals, just the threat of the unseen “Others.”